1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate splitting apparatus and a method of splitting substrate, by using the substrate splitting apparatus; substantially, the present invention relates to a glass substrate splitting apparatus and a method of splitting glass substrates, by using the glass splitting apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Glass planking, organic polymer planking and other types of planking are used in the LCD (liquid crystal display) device and in other plane surface display devices. The planking can be used for the substrates of TFT (thin film transistor), the substrates of ordinary circuits, optics components and other applications. In order to accommodate the manufacture of display devices in different sizes, a planking has to be cut into pieces of different sizes. Furthermore, consideration is to be given to the material characteristics of different plankings during cutting as well as the structure strength of planking after cutting, in order to ensure the quality of products.
Take the glass substrate for example, FIG. 1 is a conventional cutting apparatus for splitting a glass substrate. As FIG. 1 shows, the splitting apparatus including a stage 70. The stage 70 loads a glass substrate 20 from a substrate conveyor installation. A bracket 30 is mounted on the stage 70. A substrate breaking bar 50 is disposed below bracket 30. The substrate breaking bar 50 can move upwards and downwards with respect to the bracket 30 and correspond to the position of the pre-crack (not shown) at the bottom of the glass substrate 20. A hammering device is disposed above the substrate breaking bar 50. As the hammering device strikes downwards, the substrate breaking bar 50 also moves downwards and then hammers the top surface of the glass substrate 20 relative to the position of a pre-crack. The glass substrate 20 then splits into two halves with respect to the transverse direction of the pre-crack, and thus the objective of cutting the glass substrate 20 is achieved.
However, the hammering causes the substrate breaking bar 50 to move in high speed, and this may break the glass substrate 20. The depth of pre-crack has to be increased to reduce the possibilities of broken substrate. However, the position of pre-crack is situated at the edge of glass substrate 20 after the cutting. The pre-crack deepening process will also have an influence on the structure of glass substrate 20 which also affect the strength of the edge structure of the glass substrate 20 after cutting.